Friday, March 11, 2016

Objectivity: Ur doin it wrong

OK, two things. First, pay attention: Don't let the deck say the candidate is going to "host a rally" Friday when the main hed says it's been, erm, postponed.

Second, and more to the point: If you're going to provide "context," in line with the Hutchins Commission's 7-decade-old request that people who provide facts also provide some truth about their facts, try not to screw it up completely:

Trump's campaign focuses largely on job creation and finances.

I'm trying to think of some circumstance under which a grownup, air-breathing observer of the past few months' events would consider that an appropriate summary, rather than an exceptionally courteous and stupid fiction. I'd be much more inclined to place some credence in a reporter who observed that Trump's campaign to date has focused largely on race-baiting and elaborate attributions of all the world's ills to failures in dealmaking. You may like my observation or not, but I find it hard to see how it's a less impartial, let alone less closely observed, rendering of the evidence.